Translating social science
Good versus bad utopianism
Joshua M. Price | State University of New York at Binghamton
Dedicated to the memory of Daniel Simeoni
Insufficient attention has been paid in Translation Studies to the challenges particular to translating social scientific texts. Of the few who have taken up the topic, Immanuel Wallerstein has argued that one of the distinguishing characteristics of social scientific texts is that they traffic in concepts. Wallerstein wants the translation of social science to further the possibility of a universal conversation in the social sciences. I argue that a universal conversation in the social sciences is neither possible nor desirable. Instead, this article proposes that translating social science can contribute to conceptual clarification and elaboration. In this way, the translation may complement and further the flowering of the ‘original’ concept. The essay concludes with an extended example—how ‘bewilderment’ might be translated into Spanish.
Keywords: translation, social science, critique of universalism
Article outline
- ‘Bewilderment’ by way of example
- A preposterous history of bewilderment, by way of conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
Published online: 03 November 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.20.2.09pri
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.20.2.09pri
References
Bal, Mieke
1999 Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary art, preposterous history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Benjamin, Walter
[1923] 1968 “The task of the translator”. Illuminations, tr. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books 1968 69–82.
Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Núñez
1907 [1542]. Spanish explorers in the southern United States, 1528–1543[sic]: The narrative of Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, ed. Frederick W. Hodge. (No translator listed.) New York: Scribner.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh
2007 Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History.]
DaMatta, Roberto
1994 “Antropologia da Saudade”. Conta de Mentiroso: Sete ensaios de an-tropologia brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Rocca Ltda 1994 17–35.
Eoyang, Eugene Chen
1993 The transparent eye: Reflections on translation, Chinese literature, and comparative poetics. Hawai’i: University of Hawaii Press.
Feyerabend, Paul K.
1975 Against method. London: Verso.
Freud, Sigmund
(1961 [1930]) Civilization and its discontents, tr. James Strachey. New York: Norton.
Heim, Michael Henry and Andrzej W. Tymowski
(Principal investigators) 2006 “Guidelines for the translation of social science texts”. http://www.acls.org/sstp_guidelines.pdf (retrieved November 13, 2007).
Liu, Lydia
1995 Translingual practice: Literature, national culture and translated modernity 1900–1930. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Lugones, Maria
2003 Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing coalition against multiple oppositions. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Maranhão, Tullio
2002 “The politics of translation and the anthropological nation of the ethnography of South America”. Tullio Maranhão and Berhard Streck, eds. Translation and ethnography. Arizona: University of Arizona Press 2002 64–84.
Mignolo, Walter D.
1995 The darker side of the Renaissance: Literacy, territoriality, and colonization. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich
1977 [1873]. “On truth and lies in the nonmoral sense”, ed. and tr. Daniel Breazeale. Philosophy and truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s note books in the early 1870s. Amherst, New York: Pronetheos Books 1990 79–91
Ortega y Gasset, José
2000 [1937]. “The misery and the splendor of translation”, tr. Elizabeth Gamble Miller. Lawrence Venuti, ed. The Translation Studies reader. New York: Routledge 2000 49–64.
Pandey, Gyanendra
2005 The construction of communalism in colonial North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Price, Joshua M.
2004 “Critical race theory’s dream narratives—A method for an anti-racist social science?” Austin Sarat and Patricia Ewick, eds. Studies in law, politics, and society 321. London: Elsevier Publishers 2004 39–77.
Rabassa, Gregory
2005 If this be treason: Translation and its dyscontents, A memoir. New York: New Directions.
Sahlins, Marshall
1976 Culture and practical reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa
2007 “Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledges”. Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais 771. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-29-santos-en.html (retrievedJuly 3, 2008).
2004 “A critique of lazy reason: Against the waste of experience”. Immanuel Wallerstein, ed. The modern world-system in the longue durée. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers 2004 157–197.
Simeoni, Daniel
1998 “The pivotal status of the translator’s habitus”. Target 10:1. 1–39. 
Stavans, Ilan
2002 “Introduction”. Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition. New York: Penguin Books 2002 ix–xxxii.
Venuti, Lawrence
1986 “The translator’s invisibility”. Criticism 28:2. 179–212.
1994 The translator’s invisibility: A history of translation. New York: Routledge.
Wallerstein, Immanuel
1981 “Concepts in the social sciences: Problems of translation”. Marilyn Gaddis-Rose, ed. Translation spectrum: Essays in theory and practice. Albany: State Univer¬sity of New York Press 1981 88–98.
Cited by
Cited by 11 other publications
Bateman, Simone
2020. Exploring reproduction (or is it procreation?) over language boundaries: the challenges and hidden opportunities of translation.
Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online 11 ► pp. 30 ff.
Buzelin, Hélène, Mylène Dufault & Cecilia Foglia
2015. On translating the ‘bible of marketing’.
The Translator 21:1 ► pp. 24 ff.
Celotti, Nadine
2021. Les paratextes d’oeuvres traduites de sciences humaines et sociales : un espace à explorer
:
Regard posé sur les premières traductions en langue française de An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations d’Adam Smith.
TTR 34:1 ► pp. 127 ff.
Gambier, Yves
2021.
In Handbook of Translation Studies [Handbook of Translation Studies, 5],
► pp. 234 ff.
Guzmán, María Constanza
2020. (re)Visiting the Translator’s Archive: Toward a Genealogy of Translation in the Americas.
Palimpsestes :34 ► pp. 45 ff.
Lemieux, René
2018. La souveraineté peut-elle se transférer? Les enseignements de la traduction du traité de Waitangi (1840).
TTR 29:2 ► pp. 73 ff.
Price, Joshua M.
2017. Whose America? Decolonial Translation by Frederick Douglass and Caetano Veloso.
TTR 28:1-2 ► pp. 65 ff.
Strausz, László
2017.
In Hesitant Histories on the Romanian Screen,
► pp. 11 ff.
Sung-Gi Jon
2012. A Metareflection on the Translation Theories of the Humanities.
The Journal of Translation Studies 13:1 ► pp. 205 ff.
TEKGÜL, Duygu
2019. Yeni Medyada Çeviri Aracılığıyla Popülerleştirme: Düşünbil Örneği.
Çeviribilim ve Uygulamaları Dergisi :25 ► pp. 71 ff.
Tükel Kanra, Yeşim
2019.
In Studies from a Retranslation Culture [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ],
► pp. 41 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.